Warm-up.

Discuss with your teammates:

• Which stakeholder(s) do you want to prioritize?
• Share your draft semi-structured interview questions

1

Semi-Structured Interviews

CS 344

Prof. Jean Salac

2

Agenda

Warm-Up & Logistics

Semi-Structured Interviews Overview

Draft Semi-Structured Interview Protocol with your Team

3

Logistics & Announcements

• Wednesday Prep due 10 minutes after class
• Individual Deliverable - Personal Website due tonight 10pm
• Team Deliverable - Requirements Elicitation Protocols due 1/27 10pm
• Starting this today!
• Drop-in Hours today 1:45-3:15pm
• Any student announcements?

4

Notes from Exit Tickets

• Optional, not required: Implementing “Skip to Main Content”
• Exemplary Requirement for Personal Website:
• Comment out any unused elements from templates OR
• If you have plans to use them in the future, tell me in the write-up

5

UX Life Cycle

We are here!

6

Why semi-structured interviews?

• More flexible than structured interviews (you only get to ask the predetermined questions)
• Semi-structured allows you to follow up, clarify, or expound with interesting points
• Dive deeper into understanding the problem users are encountering

7

Before Drafting the Protocol: Goals

• What are specific goal(s) of the semi-structured interview?
• Example: Understanding the problem, supporting interface design, etc
• How will questions serve that goal?
• Elaborating on content, modeling of cognition, etc
• Are there different goals for different stakeholders?
• Example:
• Broad: Understanding how to support families in reducing food waste
• Specific: Understanding how food storage habits impacts food waste at home

8

Before Drafting the Protocol: Discuss Goals with your Team

What are specific goal(s) of the semi-structured interview?

• How will questions serve that goal?
• Potential ways questions can serve that goal from Scheinholtz & Wilmont:
• Elaborating on content
• Explaining ideas & concepts
• Asking thought-provoking questions
• Argumentation
• Resolving conceptual discrepancies
• Modeling of cognition
• Are there different goals for different stakeholders?

9

Before Drafting the Protocol: Positionality

• Who are you in relation to your participants?
• Power dynamics, status, or other forms of capital
• Comfort or familiarity
• How does your knowledge of the participants inform questioning format & approach?
• From Jean’s example:
• Language complexity
• Monitoring facial expressions & body language
• Let children choose their “superhero” name

10

Before Drafting the Protocol: Positionality

Discuss with your teammates:

• Who are you in relation to your potential stakeholders?
• Who has more power, status, or capital?
• What are direct & indirect ways to convey power, status, or capital?
• How does your knowledge of the potential stakeholders inform questioning format & approach?
• What kind of characteristics, background, or prior knowledge do you expect potential stakeholders have? What do they actually have?

11

Developing the Protocol: Warm-Up

• Approach interview as a “friendly conversation”
• Valid, useful data requires psychological safety
• Relevant warm-up question(s) help build rapport
• From Jean’s example protocol: “Have you ever tried talking to a computer?”

12

Developing the Protocol: Question Guidelines

• Interview questions should be:
• Inviting: Interesting for the participant
• Example: “Tell me about…” invites a story
• Accessible: Familiar, not opaque or double-barreled.
• Double-barreled: Asking multiple questions within a question
• Bad Example Question: How does the weather affect your mood and social life?
• Analyzable: Serves the goal(s) of the project & interview
• Suitable for the available time

13

Developing the Protocol: Interview Flow

• ~6-8 questions for 30 minutes, but you won’t know for sure until you test them. Will test your questions on Friday!
• What questions lead to interesting conversation topics?
• When do you probe and ask for further details?
• From Jean’s example protocol: “If a participant mentions another group of users not mentioned in the scenario,...”
• How do you probe and ask for further details?
• From Jean’s example protocol: “...how the rules will affect them”

14

Developing the Protocol: Interview Flow

• What do you ask participants, when, & why?
• Often start with more general & move toward more specific questions

15

Developing the Protocol: Interview Flow

• For Requirements Elicitation:
• Start with an open primary neutral question, e.g. “Why are you interested in templating techniques?”
• Close with a closed primary leading question, e.g. “Does anyone who’s writing the requirements know the rationales?”

16

Developing the Protocol: Adapting to different participants

• Design primary questions with multiple probes
• Primary: Main topic
• Probes: Important details
• Protocol for adjusting questions
• From Jean’s example protocol: “...how the rules will affect them”
• Younger children: “Will the rules work for X users?” then “Why?”
• Older children: “How will the rules affect X users?”
• Protocol for adjusting order of questions
• Which questions take priority over others? Specify which are essential vs optional

17

What happens after semi-structured interviews?

• Semi-structured interviews for depth vs Surveys for breadth
• Semi-structured interviews inform survey design for UX research:
• What are the most salient user characteristics?
• What are good questions to ask?
• What format should those questions be in? (e.g. multiple choice, select all that apply, ranking, etc)
• What are good options to offer as responses?
• Should these questions & response options change depending on user characteristics?
• Semi-structured interviews improve the validity of survey data

18

Teamwork Time: Start Semi-Structured Interview Protocol

• Team Deliverable - Requirements Elicitation Protocols linked on course schedule
• Draft a semi-structured interview protocol for your stakeholder(s)
• Next class & Friday’s class will have teamwork time on Team Deliverable - Requirements Elicitation Protocols due 1/27 10pm

19

Fill out Exit Ticket before leaving class!

Exit Ticket: https://tinyurl.com/CS344-W25-Exit-Ticket

​

Exit tickets tell me:

• which concepts or practices were clear to you
• which concepts or practices I need to go over more

20

Put Title Here

Authors

Affiliation

21

Template Outline Slide

Motivation

Related Work

Theoretical Framework

Study Context

Results

22

Template Content Slide

Important things here

23

Template Conclusion Slide

Authors

Key Takeaways:

24